Break it down for me? 2 - General Break it Down archive thread

[Helleofabore]

I am creating this thread as an archive thread just for all the important sources of information that we read and want to keep. With the option for saving threads so we can find them easily, I figure it is a good way to gather specific types of information into one place.

Please post studies, papers, media articles that pull together references, or informative articles, tweets, videos, and interviews. Only on the topic of Sex & Gender.

It would be helpful if you could please post with a summary of the article, study, papers, etc so people can also use Advanced Search to locate the information and it will make it easier to read through to find the information again too. Also, and this is just a thought, I have found putting a bolded sentence at the top to make it really clear what the post is about works well for scrolling through to find the posts that people might be looking for specifically.

I don't want to be the thread police, but ask that we keep this free of discussion. Getting into discussion on this thread will mean it will fill up quickly and not serve the purpose of being simply an archive.

If you post things on this thread that might be useful on other specific archive threads, then feel free to post them there or someone else might do this too.

Can I ask that if you want to discuss something you see here, you start a thread to do so and link and refer to a post on this thread? If a post has been presented with commentary that people disagree with, can that be discussed on a new thread please.

Keep this thread free just for the information.

Here is the previous Break it down for me thread?

The specific archive threads are:

Save female sports evidence thread
Statistics & poll evidence archive thread
Medical treatment archive thread
It will never happen - resource thread
Court cases/Judicial Reviews/ET/ETAs

Thank you.

Edited by MNHQ at OP's request

Just a reminder of this resource of the list of male criminals in female prison. In the USA.

notourcrimes.info/prison-data.html

ANOTHER ANALYSIS OF HOW DIFFERENT EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATIVE ARGUMENTS WORK.

Another video that analyses the arguments used that we so often see. Often they are in the same post or in subsequent posts.

x.com/hothingsgirlsay/status/2051375505362784316?s=46

“This is a masterclass in persuasion layering:

– Presuppositions disguised as questions
– Emotional stacking (past harm → present threat → urgency)
– Moral framing that makes disagreement feel unethical
– And a critical factor bypass at the end

“Even if you don’t understand…”

That line removes the need for thinking and replaces it with alignment.

That’s not accidental. That’s design.”

It covers things like the emotional manipulation we see.

The ‘if you don’t understand our identities, that is ok, you just need to support us any way you can’.

This speech she is analysing even uses moral arguments to support groups and people financially through ‘giving back’ or making purchase choices. And it is an interesting one because it uses the sacrifice argument we sometimes see. The ‘it is hard to make ethical decisions about supporting this group but it is worth it’.

The swerve that ‘well-informed people need to see us as people, not as political ideologue or ideological’ was a great to see this male speaker try to us.

He then swivels into the historic reference. The false leverage of historical groups opressed for being same sex attracted that actually have nothing to do with transgender identities. And then ties it to this ‘new wave of trans hate that seeks to erase’ trans people.

The next segment tries to then use the ‘you know us’ plea which reassures people that people with transgender identities are in everyone’s lives in an attempt to reassure people. MJ Murphy points this out as Proximity anchoring as a part of the emotional manipulation. Well, this one we know and what is strange is the number of times though, that activist posters accuse us of not knowing any trans people. It seems to always be an exaggeration - they are everywhere and never cause any concern or we have never met them.

I think she raises some good points here.

The most significant point though was the call to ‘bypass critical thinking’. That bit about ‘if you don’t understand us, that is ok, just support us’.

NAOMI CUNNINGHAM ON PRONOUNS AND WHY SHE NO LONGER USES INCORRECT SEX PRONOUNS

This thread, by the way, was in answer to beccajiggens posting:

"Deliberately misgendering trans people in such aggressive ways is conduct unbecoming of a barrister. Again.
@ barstandards"

(my edit to remove auto formatting, but the barstandards was a tag on twitter, intended to bring Naomi's post to the attention of the regulation board)

Naomi's answer:

https://x.com/LoudBonnet/status/2079302831215902930?s=20

" Because I am a dissenter from gender ideology, the pronouns I use are almost invariably determined by the sex, not the gender identity, of the person I am referring to.

I understand that some people think my choice in this is unkind, or rude. I might have thought that myself a few years ago.

I no longer think that, for a number of reasons.

The first is that courtesy is freely given. A "courtesy" demanded with menaces loses its quality as such, and becomes a gesture of submission to bullies.

The second is about truth. If I say "she" of a man, I am implying that he is female. Men aren't female, so I am saying something untrue.

We all tell polite lies sometimes when it doesn't matter much. I think back when I was willing to tell this one, I thought it didn't matter much.

I know better now. What I know now is that many of the men who want to be referred to by feminine pronouns also want everyone to be forced to treat them for all purposes as if they were women, to the detriment of actual women's privacy, dignity and safety.

I think it matters a lot that we should be able to say "no" to those men, and to explain in plain words why we say no (because they are men).

The third is about clarity. Even if everyone knows in theory that the man we're all referring to as "she" is a man really, referring to him as "she" is confusing.

Clarity is fundamental to my job as an advocate: I need to be able to put my arguments as clearly and vividly as possible.

The fourth and perhaps the most important is about what's known to propagandists, advertisers and psychologists as the "repetition effect." People will believe almost any lie, however obviously untrue, if you repeat it often enough.

Lies don't get much more obviously untrue than "trans women are women."

It is repeated like a mantra by trans activists and those who see themselves (or want to be seen) as "allies."

But this lie has a superpower. The superpower is pronouns.

The near-universal compliance with "preferred pronouns," even by many of those who dissent in other ways from gender ideology, means that the lie is repeated with almost every utterance about a man who says he is a woman (or a woman who says she is a man).

And it's repeated not as an assertion, but insidiously, subliminally, by the use of little grammar-words that are normally handled on autopilot and barely registered by either speaker or listener.

It's brilliant propaganda. It's especially brilliant that so many dissenters have been induced to reinforce the lie in this way.

I'm not prepared to.

end/ "

Thank you, Naomi. This is succinctly worded yet detailed.

This one strays into other current issues.

I usually find Feminist academic theory dull and irrelevant - living female is hard work enough - but found this very interesting as a condensed history. It's an episode of an American Reform Jewish podcast, by Kara Jezella, who has written a book about Feminist Antisemitism, with a criticism of Judith Butler and others. Very American, but presented with great clarity and explains stuff about gender-themed academia over the last decades.

https://x.com/karajesella

https://t.co/YKh7HgmNpB

The haters are hating it, predictably.

Brilliant.

It is like a MN FWR thread in a video.

thanks Teawithliberty.

x.com/teawithliberty/status/2080686524773937169?s=46

EA2010 EHCR GUIDANCE HISTORY SUMMARY

by KISHWER FALKNER AND AKUA REINDORF

5th August 2026

https://archive.is/iiXxD

This is a good short summary of the history of the guidance and how we got here

“The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) revised statutory code of practice for services, which is effective on Wednesday, is 342 pages long, but only a small part of it has received public attention: the section explaining how to implement the 2025 decision of the Supreme Court in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers.

The judgment did not change the law. It just clarified that in the Equality Act 2010 the words “woman”, “man” and “sex” refer to biological sex. On that point, the 2011 version of the code was wrong. It said that transgender people should generally be permitted to self-identify into single-sex services for the opposite sex.

It had been known that the old code was wrong since 2022, when another case established that “self-ID” is not the law. That is when hospitals should have stopped making female nurses share changing rooms with male colleagues who identify as women. It is when male prisoners who discovered a transgender identity between the courtroom and the prison cell should no longer have been placed into women’s jails. Female-only rape crisis centres should have refused entry to men who said they were women. And shops, leisure centres and pubs should have taken down the signs telling customers to use whichever toilets they felt comfortable with.

But those things did not stop. The law was widely ignored until the Supreme Court judgment hit the headlines. Legally, that judgment was about a minor issue: whether the 9,000 transgender people who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs) should be treated as their biological sex under the Equality Act, in the same way as transgender people who do not hold GRCs. The court decided that they should.

Stonewall quickly announced that the judgment was “not law” until the revised code took effect. That was irrefutably wrong, but it took hold. From the Cabinet Office, which co-ordinates policy for central government departments, to the Scottish parliament and government, to NHS bodies, police forces, local authorities and private sector businesses, organisations which were still operating on a self-ID model carried on, repeating the mantra that they were “waiting for the EHRC guidance”. So too did employers and unions, even though the code does not cover the law applicable to workplaces. “

And it continues on ..

“The code is finally coming into effect today. It feels like a victory for those of us who devoted months of anxious scrutiny to its creation.

But in reality it changes nothing. The law was already the law, and it will continue to be the law. It will still be disregarded by those who oppose it, especially if encouraged by continued government apathy about women’s rights to privacy, dignity and safety. And it will remain unenforced by the EHRC, which simply cannot take up the cudgels on its meagre funding.

It is not a historic day for women’s rights. But the code is at least a tool in the armoury of those women and grass-roots groups who will have to carry on fighting this uniquely ferocious war. We salute them.”

SEX REJECTION

This is an interesting attempt to change the language to be more accurate.

https://x.com/v_sivadge/status/2085845959444136332?s=46

the tweet:

“Did you catch the language?

“Sex-Rejecting Procedures” has entered the chat.

“Gender-affirming care” is out.

That didn’t happen by accident. My incredible legal team fought to keep this language in the agreement—and succeeded. I’m told TCH was not thrilled about the change. 🖕🏼

For years, we've surrendered the language and allowed activists to wrap irreversible sex rejecting interventions in cute euphemisms designed to silence questions and disarm criticism.

No more.

Words matter because words shape reality.

And these procedures don't affirm a child's sex.

They reject it.”

The tweet is about the following text:

"Sex-Rejecting Procedures" means any medical, surgical, or pharmaceutical intervention provided to an individual that is intended to suppress, alter, or eliminate endogenous pubertal development, or to modify primary or secondary sex characteristics, for the purpose of aligning with or affirming an individual's asserted gender identity rather than the individual's sex, where such intervention would not otherwise be indicated for a congenital, pathological, or non- mental disorder or disease-related condition. These include, but are not limited to:
**
a Puberty suppression: prescription or administration of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists or antagonists or functionally equivalent agents, intended to pause or suppress pubertal progression.
**
b Hormone administration: prescription or administration of estrogen, testosterone, or synthetic analogs, or any other medication which blocks or otherwise inhibits the effects of the body's natural production of sex hormones, in a manner intended to induce physical traits associated with the opposite sex or to suppress traits associated with the individual's sex.
**
c Surgical interventions: any surgical procedure intended to alter, remove, or reconstruct primary or secondary sex characteristics, including but not limited to mastectomy, breast augmentation,
genital reconstruction or modification,
hysterectomy, oophorectomy, orchiectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, and other surgeries performed primarily to approximate sex-typical appearance.
**
d Voice modification interventions: clinical interventions intended to masculinize or feminize a person's voice to approximate sex-typical vocal characteristics, including but not limited to speech-language therapy when undertaken to alter pitch, resonance, intonation, or speech patterns to align with a gender identity or pharmacological, surgical, or procedural interventions to affect the larynx, vocal cords, or related structures to modify sex-typical voice characteristics.
**
e Other ancillary or preparatory interventions provided in connection with any medica or clinical services described in the above sections (a)-(d).

THEARBOURIST - BOUNDARY VIOLATIONS REBRANDED AS RIGHTS

https://x.com/thearbourist/status/2034625446784958710?s=46

“When one group’s ‘rights’ require another group to surrender privacy, fairness, or conscience, the conflict is no longer about equality. It is about power.”

”The smartest move activists made was rhetorical: they stopped arguing for contested demands and started calling them “rights.” After that, dissent could be recoded as cruelty, and ordinary objections could be treated as moral failure.”

“Female spaces were not built out of bigotry. They were built because sex differences are real, and privacy, safety, and fairness matter. Calling those boundaries hateful does not refute them. It just bullies people into silence.”

“A demand for equality says: leave me free. A demand for compliance says: you must affirm, yield, and rearrange your world around me. Too much of this debate is presented as the first when it is plainly the second.”

This is part of a longer read.

deadwildroses.com/2026/03/19/boundary-violations-rebranded-as-rights/

This is a reaction vid that could be putting voice to many FWR posts.

x.com/malesperish/status/2093281435041812721/video/1?s=46

COX AND MADISON DISCUSS THE TERM BIOLOGICAL SEX

https://youtube.com/shorts/3iQB5tNGbL8?si=b9GxA3_zXpXsHHnU

This discussion between Cox and Madison is enlightening in so many ways. Including the need for men to control the language women use to describe their uniqueness, just to be able to force themselves into that language. Misogyny writ large.

Here women are told they are crazy for using the term ‘biological sex’. From a male person who has rejected his biological sex and demands that female people stop considering him as being male. Because apparently a shedload of extreme body modification should make any difference in whether we consider him male or not.

This is part of that entitlement expectation axis that these male people, and others, have tried to apply to being female. The misogyny is that no male person can ever be female, but some people consider being treated as being female when that is not materially true as a reward. One that can be obtained through high enough investment, and that investment is either currency, trauma or what is considered ‘good behaviour’ etc or any combination of those elements.

PRONOUNS - USING NO PRONOUNS IS CONSIDERED DISCRIMINATORY

A point that is not often considered by those who say that people can just avoid using pronouns for those who demand wrong sex pronouns is that if it is done for only those individuals, it can be described as discriminatory behaviour as well by some people and some organisations.

This was mentioned in this news report about Peter Vlaming in this video clip.

https://x.com/irenebritusa/status/2096019109620428984/video/1

as well as a link to the video the tweet says :

https://x.com/irenebritusa/status/2096019109620428984/video/1?s=46

“Never forget! In 2018, a teacher was fired for unintentionally using she/her pronouns. In a virtual reality activity in class, he said: "don't let her walk into the wall". The student identified as a boy. The superintendent said avoiding the use of pronouns altogether was discriminatory, too. She claimed the teacher only did that with the transgender student. After a lengthy legal battle, a $575 000 settlement was reached in 2024.”

Here is a summary about Vlaming’s case.

https://adflegal.org/case/vlaming-v-west-point-school-board/#case-details

HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN (US) & THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLAN

This is how the strategies keep on coming. “The plan is to hammer home stories of transgender teens suffering discrimination and humiliation, gaining sympathy from voters”… it is a similar strategy that we see over and over.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/15/democrats-plan-decade-long-strategy-push-pro-transgender-narrative/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

By Kerry Picket
The Washington Times
August 15, 2026

“What to know

Democrats are intensifying efforts to support transgender rights ahead of the midterms.

The goal is to increase visibility of transgender individuals over the next decade.

Democrats believe these attack ads will backfire as public support for transgender rights grows.”

“Democrats are doubling down on their fight to convince Americans that their transgender policies should return.
The plan is to hammer home stories of transgender teens suffering discrimination and humiliation, gaining sympathy from voters and making a liability out of the expected onslaught of GOP ads attacking Democrats’ transgender policies.”

The article describes the plan presented to caucus.

It finishes with:

”Democrats said such attack ads will backfire on Republicans as Americans increasingly embrace transgender rights, the same way Democrats brought voters to their side on gay marriage.

It won’t be an easy battle for LGBTQ advocates.

Various polls show most Americans are against male-born athletes competing in female sports, with voters saying doctors should not perform transgender surgery on minors, and that transgender people should use bathrooms assigned to their biological sex.”

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST ON SAFE DISCUSSION ENVIRONMENTS

https://x.com/naomicfisher/status/2097057766024310946?s=46

“Somewhere along the way, the concept of psychological safety underwent concept creep. People started to say they were unsafe if another person disagreed with them. They started to say that safe environments meant ones where everyone talked the same way, thought the same way and never ever joked or teased.

People started, in short, to equate safety with a total lack of challenge. Being a safe person meant signing up to an unspoken code of conduct. Never speaking up or ask awkward questions. A safe space meant one where everyone had to keep to the rules and Be Kind.

But true psychological safety comes from knowing that you can tolerate disagreement. It comes from knowing that people can have different views, and they may challenge you…and you’ll be safe enough anyway. It comes from knowing that you can express what you think, and you won’t be shunned or kicked out.

True psychological safety comes when we are not afraid of discomfort, not when we try to eliminate it.

Let’s stop pretending otherwise.”

THE LIST OF THINGS THAT ARE INCLUDED IN FACIAL 'FEMINISATION' SURGERIES

www.thelondontransgenderclinic.uk/price-list/

So the facial features that a male needs to change to better simulate a female's face starts with the following (alphabetically listed):

Brow lift
Cheek enhancement
Chin reduction / shaping
Eye feminisation
fat grafting
Forehead / brow contouring
Hairline lowering
Jaw shaping
Rhinoplasty (this may also include the change to the nasal columella to around 95 degrees which is different to 'male', removing a normally bulbous nasal tip, )
Thyroid shave / Adams apple reduction
Upper lip lift (I wonder if this is to give the 'v' which is a female trait vs the 'u' of males. OR could be combined with the rhinoplasty to change the space between the nose and lip which is shorter in females than males according to many cosmetic surgery sites. I guess if you shorter this you also emphasise that nasal columella angle to be more like a female angle)

I can only assume that the image attached is an aspirational before and after.

I cannot quite understand posters who seem to be determined to tell us that sex cannot be intuitively and quite accurately understood from unsurgically altered male faces. I am quite sure that Sal Grover could come and tell us what her algorithm measures as it is rather accurate which is why a transitioned male took her to court regarding access to Giggle.

So, combined with face and general skeletal proportions such as males having bigger heads and longer arms and legs, bigger hands and feet, different angles of bones in hips/legs etc, I suspect that some posters are perhaps really not very observant about the specifics of male faces and anatomy.

(Saving the pic on this thread in case the page changes)

BIOLOGICAL SEX IS BINARY AND ROOTED IN ANISOGAMY

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ele.70426

Tim Janicke, Göran Arnqvist, Pierre-André Crochet, Patrice David, Philippe Jarne, Jussi Lehtonen, Thomas Lenormand, Edward H. Morrow, Geoff A. Parker, Paul A. Saunders, Jeanne Tonnabel, Frédéric Veyrunes, Christoph R. Haag

First published: 10 July 2026

ABSTRACT

The definition of biological sex has become a renewed focus of societal debate, fuelled by the conflation of biological principles with discussions of human gender diversity. Here, we argue that conceptual clarity critically depends on separating these domains. Drawing on evolutionary theory and empirical evidence, we maintain that biological sex is best defined as a binary classification of male and female reproductive strategies rooted in anisogamy, characterised by the production of two discrete gamete types of different sizes. We stress that gamete size constitutes the ultimate criterion for biological sex and that this definition applies consistently across sexual systems, from separate-sexed species to hermaphrodites, irrespective of variation in karyotype, hormonal profile, somatic phenotype, or behaviour. Further, we emphasise that evolutionary insights offer a coherent explanation for recurring, though not universal, associations between biological sex and patterns of sex-specific selection, sexual dimorphism and parental care. We conclude that the definition of biological sex as a binary classification based on gamete size is a powerful scientific framework compatible with the diversity of sexual phenotypes found in anisogamous organisms and distinct from the concept of human gender.

Concluding Remarks

Up to this point, we have intentionally refrained from discussing the implications of biological sex for our understanding of sex in humans. Yet, within the outlined definitional framework, humans are not exceptional. Rather, like all other metazoans, we are anisogamous organisms, and it is this shared reproductive feature that makes the binary definition of biological sex directly applicable to humans. Because human individuals can produce only one of the two gamete types, biological sex can be mapped onto individuals, as in other species with separate sexes. Challenges can arise when applying the binary definition of biological sex in society under the assumption that biological sex is universally tied to other traits, such as karyotype, hormone levels, the morphology of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, or behaviour. This assumption, for instance, ignores the possibility that genetic variants or differences in sex development can result in a divergence between gametic sex and phenotypic correlates. Crucially, however, the definition of biological sex based on anisogamy neither relies on nor supports this assumption. Therefore, the binary definition of biological sex is fully compatible with the diversity of sexual phenotypes beyond anisogamy (Heitzmann et al. 2023; Mank 2023; Loveland et al. 2025) and provides a coherent explanation for a significant part of it. In the context of ongoing societal debates, we emphasise that defining biological sex places no constraints on the diverse spectrum of human gender identities and expressions. While biological insights can inform societal debates on sex, they do not prescribe which gender-related traits society should assign, permit, or encourage for different sexes. Conflating human gender identities and expressions with the binary nature of biological sex is therefore not a scientific inference, but amounts to two fallacies: first, not acknowledging the diversity of human gender identities and expressions because biological sex is considered binary (‘naturalistic’ fallacy), and second, denying that biological sex is binary because human gender identities and expressions are not strictly binary (‘reverse naturalistic’ or ‘moralistic’ fallacy).

(The authors here are from France, Finland and Sweden )

ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE ABOUT USE OF PRONOUNS

https://x.com/IsntWorkingPod/status/2105400324651692201/video/1?s=46

The interview with Dr. P. about how using wrong sex pronouns is not a neutral act and entrenches a person into their gender identity beliefs.

CIS

Here is a man explaining all about how ‘cis’ is not offensive at all. His solution is to drop any descriptor from in front of transwomen if women reject being called ‘cis’.

x.com/no4167/status/2107409708407558277/video/1?s=46

MALE PERSON ARGUES FOR NAME CHANGE TO FEMINIST PUBLICATION

https://x.com/runthinkwrite/status/2108208439809671619?s=46
from Jon Pike

“This is odd.

A handful of people in GC ranks learned some of their politics, decades ago, in @workersliberty. (Today it's sometimes difficult to know who is most embarassed about this - us or them)
Socialist Organiser - as it then was - differentiated itself from the Socialist Workers Party in many ways but one was in relation to sex and feminism. From 1972 the SWP had a special women's newspaper: Women's Voice, but closed it down in July 1982. Women's Voice had, apparently, gone off the rails politically and was not recruiting to the Party sufficently. It was too focussed on specifically women's politics and insufficiently on class politics. There was a long, and, for some, formative debate about the relationship between socialism and feminism.

People in Socialist Organiser, back in the early 80s learned that this decision was wrong. In particular, it was important to assert the 'right of women to organise autonomously.' To that end, SO maintained its own newspaper 'Women's Fightback' And, though it's a bit sporadic, the paper remains to this day.

But what's this? On their website the AWL have posted this weird article, by a trans-identifying male, which questions the name of the paper. The AWL are considering changing the name of their women's paper - by dropping the, er, woman bit.

They assert that 'Feminisim is not just for women' and express their dismay that the title 'Woman's Fightback' causes some alarm that its a GC publication.

The point of this post is to draw attention to this very strange article, but also to show how far the politics of the group have shifted - it is publicly abandoning what seemed to be a well rooted commitment to socialist feminism and to women's autonomy. (You might say that commitment went years ago, but this makes it pretty explicit).”

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2026-09-25/our-name-and-our-feminism

Here is most of the letter

-start-

Women’s – Belonging to, relating to, or intended for women.

Now, fighting for an end to the systematic oppression of women obviously relates to women, as does this publication. That fight is intended for women: both in terms of women obviously being interested in the end of their oppression, and women being the drivers of that fight. But that fight is also not intended for women alone…

FEMINISM – NOT JUST FOR WOMEN

While the majority of the work that goes into producing Women’s Fightback, and our feminist work more generally, is done by women (and other non-men oppressed as women), men do also contribute to Women’s Fightback, help to produce and propagate the publication, and read and fight for the demands that we publish. This is essential. Not least because, unlike general class struggle, women are not such a majority as the working class as whole.

That does not mean that we need men to ‘selflessly intervene’ to end women’s oppression, but rather that men need to be interested in ending misogyny and patriarchy – and there is plenty that should interest men towards that end, beyond simply caring for women.

Patriarchy and misogyny harm men. Patriarchy demands that there be clear demarcation between ‘men’ and ‘women’, which not only means that its enforcers must ensure that there are behaviours that women should not possess, and levels they cannot ‘rise’ to, but also means that, conversely, there are behaviours that men should not possess, and levels that they cannot ‘sink’ to. Men, obviously, use these misogynistic standards to threaten and coerce women into subservience, but they also use them to threaten and coerce more reluctant men into their intended role as fellow enforcers of patriarchy. After all, the less that patriarchy is enforced, the weaker it becomes. This results in bullying and violence between boys and men that often leaves lasting scars.

The men who present particular threats to patriarchy, are harmed particularly. The oppression of gay and bisexual men stems from this misogyny, and this is why the harshest punishment is reserved for those men who are most ‘overtly queer’ – to privately transgress what is ‘expected’ of a man is excuse enough for ridicule, but even more severe attacks are aimed at those who publicly challenge the default assumption of heterosexuality, and the expected form of family (and women’s place within that family) that follows from that assumption.

Even men who are relatively unimpacted by patriarchy and misogyny can benefit directly from women’s liberation. Contemporary feminist demands such as: free 24-7 childcare; expanded parental leave for both mothers and fathers; and reduction in working hours without a loss in pay, to increase the time parents can spend with children – all directly benefit men.
It is in the interests of men to fight back against women’s oppression, and so to that end, the fightback certainly relates to, and is intended for men, too.

While some women may respond to this by saying ‘Feminism should focus on women’s oppression, not men’s problems’, part of women’s oppression is directly caused by the harm that is done to men being passed from those men onto women. Men brutalise women, in part, to demonstrate to themselves or their peers that they are ‘domineering’ and ‘manly’; and when men’s misogynistic hazing of each other results in men with emotional deficits, it is primarily women expected to resolve that deficiency for the men in their lives.

As such, these struggles are not separate from the fight against women’s oppression, but integral to it.

WHAT IS A WOMAN?

In my attempt to define ‘Women’s’ above, I didn’t make an attempt to actually define the word ‘women’ – both because an adequate definition of a woman is too complicated to fit in this article, and because the relentless deluge of disingenuous ‘What is a woman?’ invocations, used as a stick to beat trans women for at least the past decade, have made the question rather tedious. But if we are using the word in the title of our publication, it’s worth reflecting on what it means.

One of the catalysts of our discussion on the name ‘Women’s Fightback’ was the experience of some of our comrades, who reported that, when selling copies, some people assumed it to be a transphobic ‘feminist’ (or so-called ‘gender-critical’) publication – which is why we began integrating the trans flag into the front-cover design.
Now, we should not allow transphobes’ transmisogynistic weaponisation of the word ‘woman’ make it a tainted word, but I think that part of the reason that defining a woman has become such a go-to part of the transphobic playbook is because we do a poor job of defining the word ourselves. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – after all, there are likely more possible definitions of the word ‘woman’ than there are women, but I think it may be cause for further reflection.

As a trans woman, but also a gender abolitionist, my own relationship to my identity as a woman is complex. It is a label that I’ve had to fight to be granted to me, but also a label imposed onto me, that I find restrictive and inadequate. It is in some ways something I’ve used to signal who I am, but I also recognise that it is a social, not a personal, categorisation. I am not a woman because I ‘choose to be a woman’, but because society places me into the category of ‘woman’ (even when it insists that it does not). A more in-depth exploration of womanhood will have to wait for another time, but I hope this at least highlights the somewhat competing definitions that even a single person can hold simultaneously, and how it can be difficult to reconcile those definitions.

There are more urgent matters to focus on than how we define women, but transphobes have taken this space because we have, to some extent, left it open for them. I think that if we are to keep the name Women’s Fightback, we should be thinking about how we reclaim the word ‘woman’, rather than simply hoping that transphobes will eventually hand it back.

WOMEN’S FIGHTBACK?

Overall, I do feel that the name Women’s Fightback fails to fully capture the scope of the publication, and I think it risks not engaging men who assume our feminism to be none of their concern. If a better name comes along, I may well support it. But I also feel that feminists have already given ground that has allowed transphobes to weaponise the word woman, and that dropping the word woman from our title, without addressing the underlying issue that enabled transphobes to weaponise the word in the first place, only gives them further ground.

And more important than the name itself, is the discussion and explanation of our anxieties around keeping or changing the name, which may very well be a reflection of some disagreement in our underlying politics that we have yet to explore and reconcile. In any case, I believe that it’s worth taking this opportunity to become more conscious about what our feminism actually stands for, and what aspects of it we may be taking for granted and leaving underdeveloped

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note this as I think it is the statement that is important for many reasons :

“As a trans woman, but also a gender abolitionist, my own relationship to my identity as a woman is complex. It is a label that I’ve had to fight to be granted to me, but also a label imposed onto me, that I find restrictive and inadequate.”

a woman's place is in the wrong

it's enough to make me nostalgic for Spare Rib

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. SAMUEL WARD, JR.

https://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/OpinionsPDFVersion/W2025-01186-CCA-R3-CDOPN.pdf

This is a case where the original trial judge successful removed the fact that the person killed was a male person when the person who was sentenced pleaded self defence. The appellant court over turned the decision and the case will go back to trial.

The conclusion :

‘Because we conclude that the trial court abused its discretion by excluding evidence of the victim’s biological sex and its exclusion of the evidence prevented Defendant from presenting his defense, we reverse the judgment of the trial court. Defendant’s conviction
is vacated, and this case is remanded for a new trial.’

Of course, how the outcome has been reported by some media outlets is another issue and was the prompt for this tweet below.

https://x.com/wesyang/status/2108941954742366531?s=46

-start-

This tweet is a deliberate distortion—a falsification—of what the appellate court found.

This was not a “trans panic” case in any ordinary sense of the term. The classic “trans panic” defense involves someone claiming that discovering the presumptive woman they've taken home is actually male provoked the ensuing violence. Whatever you think about such a defense, that isn't what happened here, and this ruling has done nothing to give anyone “impunity” to kill trans-identified people.

The killer in this case had been in a two-year relationship with the trans-identified male he killed and knew his sex. He claimed self-defense—the man he shot was armed—but the jury rejected his claim and convicted him of voluntary manslaughter.

But the trial judge had barred the defense from referring to the victim's sex, forcing everyone to go through an elaborate charade that the man who presented himself as a woman was in fact a woman throughout the trial. This included redacting crime-scene and autopsy photographs to conceal his male genitalia, and redacting the autopsy report to remove information establishing his sex.

One aspect of the defense thereby rendered inadmissible was that the victim was a 5'11", 262-pound biological male—a fact inescapably germane to the defendant's assessment of the danger he faced in a violent confrontation. The appellate court found that the falsification of the victim's sex misled the jury into believing “a male defendant killed a female victim.” It called Lee's biological sex “relevant and full of probative value” to Ward's self-defense claim and held that its exclusion prejudiced Ward and prevented him from fully presenting his defense.

Truthout's framing is par for the course in treatments of trans issues—as was the trial judge's elaborate falsification of reality. This is not incidental to trans inclusion but intrinsic to its present form: once a falsehood is granted standing as fact in language and law, ordinary institutional practices must be altered to accommodate it. Here that meant altering photographs, an autopsy report, testimony, and the vocabulary permitted in a criminal trial—and, according to the appellate court, misleading the jury in the process. Here it meant using references to a "trans panic"' defense that do not apply in reporting on the decision.

Transgender inclusion always means corrupting ordinary standards of evidence to collude in the falsification of reality. Kudos to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals for doing its part to contain this ongoing mania.

-end-

It is another reason language accuracy is important.